Friction Beer Co. (11018 Johnson Dr, Shawnee, KS) isn’t worried about hazy IPAs going out of style. In fact, they only see possibilities.
A new downtown Shawnee brewery, Friction Beer Co. owners Nathan Ryerson and Brent Anderson were brewing hazy hops seven years ago when the genre burst onto the scene. A hazy beer, as the name implies, is a beer with a purposefully cloudy appearance. While they’re considered cheugy, or outdated, by beer nerds, Ryerson and Anderson are sticking by hazies.
Head brewer Ryerson’s Sugalumps hazy IPA packs an intense aromatic and sweet punch. That’s due to Ryerson’s addition of thiolized yeast. This fairly new genetically engineered strain transforms the compounds in malt and hops, creating tropical flavors like guava and grapefruit.
“They’re the evolution of what yeasts are becoming,” Ryerson says. “They’re bringing out new flavors in hops that we haven’t been able to find before.”
Omega Yeast, a leading company in yeast production for craft brewing, has been diligently researching the process behind the flavor-producing agent in thiolized yeast, and the company still has much to learn, it says. For the two owners, this nebulous space only lends itself toward possibilities—an optimal future for Ryerson’s experimental brewing style, which has recently produced strawberry blonde ales and maple coffee stouts.
Neither of the owners seems to really care about what’s ‘in’ or ‘out’ and that hazy hops might be considered past its prime. With science on their side, there’s always a new frontier to explore.
